The medical field is continually frustrated by hospital-borne infections that may be due in part to lack of regular use of barrier protection between a care provider and a patient. Care providers make every attempt to regularly use medical examination gloves when interacting with patients, but due to difficulty of their use or discomfort in their fit, donning examination gloves is too often overlooked. Typical examination gloves are made of materials that are intended to fit tightly around the fingers, palm, and wrist of a subject so as to promote maximum freedom of movement and feel transmission through the glove material. This tight fit, however, also increases the difficulty of inserting a hand into the glove. Examination gloves commonly tear or are otherwise compromised while a user is inserting his hand into the glove simply due to the tight fit of the glove. This risk of tearing is even more prevalent when the glove is made of materials such nitrile that historically do not have the same elasticity of natural latex.
Tight fitting examination gloves also lead to perspiration under the glove due to lack of ventilation. This perspiration can produce a slippery connection to the hand that may cause the glove to fold over on itself further decreasing the user's comfort.
To reduce perspiration or increase comfort, some individuals use gloves that are sized for a larger person. The larger gloves, however, are proportioned to have longer finger regions with increased diameter. A user is, thus, left with a loose-fitting glove at the fingers that makes handling small equipment difficult and otherwise reduces dexterity.
Another problem with current examination gloves is that they are packaged into a container in such a manner that their removal is sometimes difficult without also tearing the glove or otherwise compromising the glove's sterility. Of greatest concern to hospitalized patients who are immunocompromised or otherwise susceptible to infection is that gloves of the prior art require a user or assistant to grasp the outside of the glove during removal from a dispenser or insertion of a hand which commonly leads to contamination and increased risk of transmission of infectious agents to the patient. This risk is much higher in non-surgical situations where assistance from another person in donning sterile gloves is not available.
All of these problems of currently used examination gloves reduce the compliance of healthcare professionals in wearing protective barrier equipment when handling or interacting with patients. As such, there is a need for an improved barrier protection that will increase user compliance and simultaneously decrease the risk or prevalence of transmission of infectious agents from a healthcare worker to a patient or vice versa.